


The Archers' Bows Have Broken

by clockworkgirl99



Category: Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare, Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Drug Use, M/M, Music, Really not as dark as these tags make it sound, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-04
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-03-05 07:26:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3111182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockworkgirl99/pseuds/clockworkgirl99
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alec Lightwood definitely died during the Uprising.  The remains found in his crib assured his parents of that fact.  </p>
<p>He died.  That is a stone cold fact.    </p>
<p>When Magnus Bane finds an unconscious black-haired boy with in an alleyway, nearly dead from a demon attack, that fact is shattered into a million pieces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Balcony Scene

**Author's Note:**

> I've changed some things around from the canon to fit the story, but not too much that it completely changes the world. That will be more apparent in the next chapters that I write. 
> 
> I thought I'd go on and get this up before I start back at school on Monday.

**Magnus Bane**

The first time Magnus Bane saw Alec Lightwood, he was sipping coffee on a balcony in Manhattan. He was taking a break from the tedious task of summoning a demon to help a certain wealthy businessman eliminate his competition. The job was nothing special or difficult, really, just a few symbols drawn on the floor and an incantation and then he'd be out of there. The only problem was his customer had walked in to complain about how long Magnus was taking during a very pivotal part of the ceremony. Magnus had had to stop his incantation to keep the man from being sucked into a demon realm. Really, Magnus thought, you'd think the mortals would have more sense than that.

He decided to take a breather and get some fresh air on the man's balcony. The apartment complex was an expensive one that housed several of New York's most affluent citizens. The balcony hung low over the street, low enough that he was able to see the people commuting home from work with their shoulders hunched against the icy winter wind.

The boy was no different. He wore a black jacket zipped tight around this thin frame with the hood drawn up, and he curled in on himself as he shuffled along. A messenger bag was slung across his body and he gnawed nervously at the nails on one of his fingers.

On the next balcony over, a group of ridiculously wealthy and ridiculously drunk middle-aged mothers stumbled out onto the balcony. They made quite a ruckus, tripping in their Christian Louboutin shoes and laughing raucously as they spilled the flutes of champagne they held in their hands. Magnus snorted at the image and leaned back in his chair. It was just past five o'clock on a Friday, and he was sure that the drunkenness levels would only escalate from there.

The scene was entertaining, but he knew that if it lasted much longer he would be forced to return to his unpleasant work to keep himself from using his magic just ever so slightly to give one of them a little push. Really, it wasn't like their husbands would even miss them. They were probably out having ardent mundane affairs at that very moment.

The boy glanced up at the women as he walked by, pushing his hood back and letting his shaggy black hair loose. He seemed to be having a similar reaction to the women as Magnus was. A smirk flashed across his face. His blue eyes narrowed in the late-afternoon sunlight and caught Magnus's own for a split second. Magnus dropped his right eye in a wink and the boy jerked his head sharply to look away. Magnus could see the stains of crimson creeping onto his pale cheeks, even from a distance.

The warlock chuckled and rose from his seat. The sooner he got back to work, the sooner he could go home to the Chairman. He cast one last glance down at the boy before slipping inside through the sliding glass doors.

It was the first time he saw the boy, but it would not be the last.


	2. An Encounter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A demon attack in an alley reunites Magnus and the blue-eyed boy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been like two years since I updated this, but I'm back now! Here's the next installment of the fic. TW for seizures and violence. Also I didn't proofread this super closely, so excuse any weird typos. It's almost midnight and I'm putting off doing the reading for my history class.

**Magnus Bane**

Magnus loved being the owner of Pandemonium.  He loved the vitality that it pulsed with on Friday nights.  The energy in the air, the heat rising from the bodies packed together on the dance floor, the scent of illicit demon drugs being passed from hand to hand.  He loved it all.

He did not love when nosy shadowhunters poked around in the back of his club, however.  

He’s just arrived for the evening, late due to a mishap involving a very large portal and a very small warlock child.  Children these days have no common sense, Magnus thought to himself as he strode past the bouncer into the club without a second glance.

When he got to his usual couch, he noticed a flash of silver out of the corner of his eye.  Glancing that way, he saw a tall dark-haired girl disappearing into one of the storage closets with a boy with dyed blue hair, presumably to have sex.  Furrowing his brow, he looked slightly to the left and saw where the glint had come from.  A blonde boy in gear stood in the shadows, watching silently as the girl and boy disappeared.  At his side was a small redheaded girl, so tiny that at first glance, she didn’t look old enough to be holding the seraph blade in her hand.

Magnus recognized her instantly.  Clarissa Morgenstern, the only product of a marriage between Jocelyn Fairchild and Valentine Morgenstern.  She looked like her mother and Magnus assumed that she would be just as insufferable.  Magnus did not know the boy, but he had a good feeling by the haughty set of his shoulders that he would have that condescending attitude that so many of the Nephilim had.

Pushing up from where he sat, Magnus strode over to the pair.  While he disliked having demons in his club, they were quite good for business because they brought drugs that downworlders could purchase in bulk.  And, he thought, murder really does put a damper on business, even if it is a demon.

“Shadowhunters,” he said as he approached.  “Why, exactly, have you brought weapons into my club?”

The blonde boy grimaced in response.  “This place is crawling with demonic activity.  We’re trying to do our job.”

“Well,” Magnus said, crossing his arms over his chest.  “I would appreciate if you would leave.  Just you being here is bad for -”

Magnus was cut off by a bloodcurdling screech coming from the storage closet.  The blonde boy flung the door open to reveal the other girl standing in the center of the floor, brandishing a whip.  There was a viscous black liquid on the floor, most likely demon blood.  The demon in question had sprouted wings and was crawling out of the window.

“Go to the alley!”  The girls shouted, whirling on her hell and hurrying back out into the club.  Her companions hastened behind her.  Magnus debated whether or not he should just stay inside and avoid that drama, but he ultimately decided that if he left the issue alone, it would keep happening.  And that would not be good for business.

He paced across the club, shoving through sweaty bodies clad in leather and lycra.  When he made it through the front door, he jogged around the corner to the alley by the club where he could hear the same screeching noise he’d heard in the closet.  It was accompanied by another sound, one that sounded much more human.  One that sounded pained.

As he rounded the corner he took in the scene.  The demon was cornered and obviously wounded.  The blonde boy and the dark-haired girl were making quick work of finishing it off.

Clarissa Morgenstern knelt by the wall that backed up to the club.  At first glance it almost looked like she was praying.  Magnus quickly realized that there was a body sprawled on the pavement in front of her, convulsing with white foam coming from the corner of his mouth.

The demon screeched its last and crumbled into dust.  Clarissa’s companions strode over to her and knelt beside her, murmuring urgently.

“What happened?”  Magnus asked, trying to see past the three Nephilim in the way. 

“Mundane,” the blonde boy said gruffly.  “It appears the demon slashed him with its claws and he’s having a reaction to the venom.”

“Warlock,” the dark-haired girl turned to him.  “Can you open a portal to the Institute?  We can’t use runes for this and by the time we could get him there on foot he’d be dead.”

Both of the girls stood and faced him, the blonde moving his hands along the mundane’s body to try to staunch what small amount of bleeding there was.  For the first time, Magnus could see the mundane’s face properly.

The face looked imminently familiar.  Magnus felt deja vu wash over him as he looked down at the boy’s face.  His pale blue eyes were wide open and unseeing.  He was drenched in sweat from his convulsions and his dark hair was plastered to his forehead.  He was so beautiful, but so very fragile.

“It’ll cost you,” Magnus said, already spreading his hands to summon the portal.  The Nephilim gathered the boy into his arms.  He fought them every second, shaking and jerking like he had been electrocuted.  And he might have been.  There were some bizarre things in demon blood, Magnus knew.  He’d been working with it for centuries.

Once the portal was open, the Nephilim stepped into it without so much as a backwards glance at Magnus.  Peeved and intrigued by the future of the mundane boy, Magnus stepped through the portal before it closed and followed the Shadowhunters to the Institute.  

 


	3. Eyes Closed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alec wakes up and encounters the weirdest gang members ever.

**Alexander Smith**

Logically, Alec knew that waiting in an alleyway for a drug dealer was not the wisest decision he’d ever made.  His curfew was in twenty minutes, first of all.  And it was going to take him at least half an hour to get back to Brooklyn from the Manhattan alley in which he currently stood.  And of course there was the whole “standing in a sketchy alley behind a sketchy club in the dark when nobody knew where you are is incredibly hazardous to your health” thing.  But the possibility of getting jumped didn’t bother him as much as the idea of his foster parents waiting up for him, growing more and more frustrated by the minute.

This was a horrible idea, and yet here he was.

His guy had said he’d meet him there at 9 PM sharp  It was now 9:40 PM and Alec had a sinking suspicion that he’d been stood up.  With a sigh, he zipped up his ratty black hoodie and popped a headphone into his right ear.  He didn’t put both headphones in because safety first.  

Obviously.  

He barely made it two feet before a figure flashed around the corner coming directly at him.   Alec had no time to react before it slammed into him, forcing him into the ground and opening up a wound on his abdomen.  It burned, worse that the time he’d gashed his leg open on the playground and the parents he’d been with at that point had poured rubbing alcohol directly onto the wound.  

The last thing he saw before he lost consciousness was a flash of red hair drifting in front of his face as someone leaned over him.

……

He woke to the sound of a faucet running.  Alec hadn’t been raised with any particular religious affiliation, but he was fairly certain that the afterlife didn’t sound like an ominously quiet bathroom.  So he didn’t think he was dead, even if he couldn’t bring his eyes to open quite yet.  

The water stopped running and footsteps approached where he lay.  A bed, it seemed.  And a comfortable one at that.  Alec didn’t know where he was, but it wasn’t the place he’d been calling home for the past couple months.  That bed was hard as hard as bricks, but this one was like a cloud.

Something cold and wet was placed across his forehead and Alec’s brain finally managed to make contact with his eyes.  They flew open and focused on a girl with dark hair leaning over him, placing a damp rag on his forehead.  

Looking at her face, Alec was struck with a wave of familiarity.  Something about her smile, the way her eyes glinted.  She looked like someone he’d known forever.

“Hello, Sleeping Beauty,” the girl said, drawing back.  “You made a pretty fast recovery, all things considered.  The medics didn’t know if you would even live.”

Disoriented, Alec turned his head to take in his surroundings.  He was in a small area, partitioned off by curtains on all sides, like in a hospital.  There was a sink a few feet away and a counter covered in vials of brightly colored liquids.

“Where…?”  He tried to ask, but he was at a loss for words.  

“What’s interesting is a mundane could never have survived that attack.  You should have been dead in seconds.  And yet you’re here.”  She crossed her arms and tilted her head to the side.  Her hair fell in a thick curtain over her arm.  

“Okay,” Alec said.  He assumed she would continue, but she didn’t.  The girl flung one of the curtains to the side, stepped through, and closed it again, leaving him alone.

Almost instantly she returned with three more people.  There was a girl with red hair that Alec dimly remembered seeing before he had fallen unconscious.  She held hands with a tall blonde boy that looked like the kind of guy Alec avoided in high school.  Handsome and very much aware of it.  They were covered in strange black tattoos, much like, he suddenly noticed, the girl with the dark hair.  

_Is this a gang?_  Alec thought, beginning to panic.   _Did I get in the cross hairs of some kind of turf war or something?_

Behind the three people with markings was a thin man who didn’t look like he quite fit in.  He was dressed ornately, in a finely tailored purple suit.  His dark hair was spiked atop his head and streaked with glitter and silver hair dye.  The man carried himself with grace, like a cat.

Alec managed to pull himself into a sitting position, with great difficulty.  He felt like he’d been hit by a subway train in a head-on collision.

“So,” the blonde boy spoke.  “You’re awake.”

“Listen, man, I was just trying to get some weed.  I wasn’t trying to get in the middle of your gang war, or whatever.  You can let me go.  I can keep my mouth shut.”  The words seem to tumble out of Alec’s mouth of their own volition.  

The man in the purple suit laughed.  The three others did not look amused.

“What’s your name?”  The blonde boy asked.

“What’s yours?”  Alec replied.  

The dark-haired girl rolled her eyes.  

“Let’s not play the “I asked you first” game, alright?  I’m Isabelle Lightwood,” she paused, pointing to her two fellow (Alec assumed) gang members.  “That’s Jace Herondale and Clary Fairchild.  Now who are you and where did you come from?”

Before Alec could speak, the man in the purple suit spoke up.  

“And _I_ am Magnus Bane, High Warlock of Brooklyn.”

Alec nodded, soaking it all in.    _Yup,_ he thought.   _I’ve finally gone off the deep end.  It was a matter of time, honestly._

“I’m Alec,” he said.  The others looked at him expectantly.

“Alec what?”  Asked Clary, furrowing her brows.

“Smith.”

An awkward silence fell across the room as the three tattooed musketeers exchanged meaningful glances.  Alec thought that people only did that in books, but apparently it was a real-life phenomenon as well.  

Finally, Magnus Bane broke the silence with “I suppose he’s not a Shadowhunter, then.”

“He has to be,” Clary said.

“Can someone please tell me what the hell is going on?”  Alec started to feel agitated, like a cornered animal.    

“It appears that you’re one of us,” Isabelle said.  “Who are your parents?”

“I’ve been living with this couple for the past couple of months.  The Johnsons.  Why does that matter?  Where the hell am I and when can I go home?”

“What do the Johnsons _do_?”  Isabelle pushed.

“Marie does something in finance and Jack just got laid off from his job.  Something in customer service, I don’t really know.  You’re not answering my questions.”  He spoke with a flat tone. Alec hated talking about the Johnsons and there were definitely more important matters at hand than explaining his home life.

Alec swung his legs to the side of the bed, but quickly realized that he wouldn’t be strong enough to make much progress.  He returned to his original sitting position, crossing his arms.  Running would have to wait until his legs didn’t feel like they were made of Play-Doh.  

“You said you’ve been living with them.  They’re not your real parents?”  Jace inquired.

Alec sighed.  He’d had to explain this situation more times than he cared to recall over the years.  He decided with some annoyance that the best thing for this situation would be to cooperate and give them the information they wanted.  Alec still had the sneaking suspicion that they would kneecap him or something if he tried to escape.    

“I’m a foster kid.  I don’t _know_ my real parents.  Never met them.  They left me at a group home when I was a baby and I’ve been moved around ever since.  Not that that’s _any of your business._ ”

“He’s got to be a Shadowhunter,” Jace said, turning to his companions.  “Maybe someone who left the Clave had him and couldn’t take care of him?”

“While I enjoy having complete strangers speculate about my personal life,” Alec said.  “I would _love_ to have an explanation and then be on my merry way.  Honestly, I’ll just take the leaving part.  You don’t have to tell me anything.”

“We can’t just let you leave,” Clary said.  “Shadowhunters are in limited supply these days.  We need all the help we can get.  And besides, we should probably figure out where you came from.”

Jace nodded in agreement.  He directed his gaze at Alec.

“You stay here and rest up.  In the meantime, we’ll get a room ready for you to stay in.  We can explain everything once you’re in better shape,” he said.  

“Why do you think I’m going to stay here with you people?  Are you insane?  The Johnsons have probably already called the cops!  Someone’s going to come looking for me.”

“The cops can’t find you here.  And besides, we have connections on the inside,” Isabelle said with a grin.

“I don’t want to stay here.  I want to go _home._ ”

“It didn’t sound like it from the way you talked about your family,” Clary noted.  

Alec flopped back onto the pillows with a sigh.

“You know what, whatever.  I’m going to wake up in my bed to find out that this was all a dream anyway.  I really need to stop taking pills from Derek.  He messes with shady stuff.”

Magnus laughed again, a musical sound.  He looked at Alec’s captors with amusement.

“You can’t actually keep him here.  For all intents and purposes, he’s a mundane and he really shouldn’t be here.”

“Funny,” Jace said as he strode over to Alec.  “I don’t remember asking your opinion.

Jace grabbed Alec’s arm and whipped out a long silver object.  It looked like a really fancy paperweight or something.  The kind of thing rich people bought at auctions for sinful amounts of money.  He pressed the tip of the glorified paperweight to Alec’s forearm and began to draw with it.

It burned.

Badly.

“What-” Alec exclaimed, but it was already done.  A black shape, much like the ones on Jace’s arms, had appeared.  

He stared at his arm in shock.  He’d (presumably) been jumped in an alleyway (Alec’s memory of the events in the alley was fuzzy at best), kidnapped by a gang, and now he was being tattooed.  This was the most bizarre night Alec had ever experienced.  Too bizarre to be real.

“There.  That’ll put you to sleep until you’re all healed up.  We’ll explain everything in the morning,” Jace said.  Alec felt his limbs and eyelids growing heavier with every second that passed.   He was too tired to argue, but he fought sleep like his life depended on it.  For all he knew, it did.

Isabelle, Clary, and Jace left the curtained area, but Magnus Bane lingered for a moment longer.  

“You don’t have to listen to them.  Contrary to popular belief, they aren’t infallible,” he said in an almost sympathetic tone.  Then he turned and left the room.

Alec blinked twice more before he fell into the deepest sleep of his life.  


End file.
